Only the Fish Are Missing At Fishport In Brooklyn

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has just about everything it needs to stimulate the city's seafood industry - except fish.

After more than eight years of planning and $25 million in outlays, the authority's Fishport project in the renovated Erie Boat Basin in South Brooklyn has a gleaming new blue and white building and a pristine parking lot. So far, however, it is not much busier than the nearby relics of New York's industrial past - grain elevators and Civil War warehouses.

At the venerable Fulton Fish Market on the East River in Manhattan, meanwhile, business is thriving, with more than 350,000 pounds of fresh fish handled daily, compared with only a few thousand pounds at the Fishport. 'Critical Mass Problem'

''The Fishport is suffering from a critical mass problem where you need deliveries from the boats to attract buyers and you need buyers to attract the boats,'' said Kenelm W. Coons, executive director of the New England Fisheries Development Foundation.

Charles Sheldon, the manager of the Port Authority's fisheries office, said, ''Nobody anticipated it would be this long before we had tenants, but interest is picking up now.'' Now that construction is completed, he said, agreements have been reached with at least three future tenants.

''There is no question in my mind that the idea of a seafood industrial park in Brooklyn will succeed,'' he said. ''The Port Authority is in this for the long haul.'' Guaranteed Fish Purchases

To keep the project alive while it seeks tenants, the Port Authority has allocated $250,000 to guarantee the purchase of fish that are delivered to Fishport but are not sold there. The Port Authority is considering whether to extend that six-month program when it expires in August.

Fishport was intended for the fish processing business as well as a wholesale market to complement the Fulton market, Mr. Sheldon said. Yet, he added, ''It would make a lot of sense to have all the seafood businesses in one spot.''

With 12,000 square feet of storage and display rooms cooled to 35 degrees, a 40-ton-a-day ice-making machine, piers for unloading five boats directly into the refrigerated hall, 12 truck loading docks, and a computerized auction room, the Fishport has operations and equipment for fish processing and wholesale buying and selling that are not available anywhere else in the New York area.

While Fulton has the benefit of attractive rents from the city, tradition and established systems of supply, Port Authority officials said Fishport has some advantages. Besides the space for related businesses, like cutting filets and other preparations for selling fish to restaurants and supermarkets, the Fishport has room to grow. The Fulton market, even its operators admit, is crowded by the South Street Seaport and is not likely to expand in the expensive land adjacent to the city's financial district.

Mark Rudes, president of the Beyer Lightning Fish Company, a wholesaler based in the Fulton Market for 50 years, is among the first to agree to rent space at Fishport. ''We are strictly wholesalers now, but we will start a business supplying restaurants from out there,'' Mr. Rudes said. No Tourist Attraction

''As long as the Fulton market exists, we'll be there,'' Mr. Rudes said. ''But I like the Fishport's isolation and the fact it is not likely to become a tourist attraction.''

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Despite its attractions, Fishport has not been quickly accepted by operators at the Fulton market.

''The Fulton market is old, it's dirty and it's got a rough and tumble atmosphere, but as a place to buy fish at a fair price, it works very well, and I don't see any need for the auction system the Fishport proposes,.'' said David L. Samuels, president of the Blue Ribbon Fish Company.

At the Fishport, wholesalers will bid publicly for specific lots of fish in a horseshoe arena with flashing lights and computer connections, a procedure that is standard at fish markets in Europe and Asia. At the Fulton market, there is no auction. Wholesalers buy fish sight unseen, normally from fishermen or cooperatives, at prices set privately.

''I've been buying fish from the same sources as my grandfather, sometimes I make a profit, and other times I get stuck and have to take a loss,'' Mr. Samuels said.

But proponents of auctions claim that system provides more encouragement for fishermen to adopt more modern methods and bring a higher quality of fish to market. ''When fish are bought by wholesalers sight unseen, boat owners who make extra efforts to preserve freshness complain they get paid the same price as others with poorer quality fish,'' Mr. Coons said.

Partisans of the Fulton market -where fishing boats have not called since the 1950's - assert that the Fishport's piers for unloading boats would not be of much use. They said fish delivered by boat - except perhaps by a few local fishermen - are not as fresh as those delivered by truck, since a truck can make the trip to New York City from ports in Massachusetts or Maine in a fraction of the time a fishing boat requires to reach New York harbor from the main fishing grounds.

The idea of combining the Fulton and Fishport operations has not attracted much support among city officials who remember that the Fulton market rejected offers to relocate to Hunt's Point in 1973.

Michael P. Huerta, commissioner for the Department of Ports, International Trade and Commerce, which manages public markets, said he has no plans to encourage the Fulton market to move, though his department is beginning to study the market's operations more closely.

After almost 10 years of paying rents to the South Street Seaport (which then passed them on to the city) the Fulton market will resume direct rent payments to the city later this summer. Investigation of Fulton

The change was prompted by an investigation by the United States Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York into business practices in the market. If the city is collecting rents directly, Mr. Huerta said, it is in a stronger legal position to regulate leases and activities in the market.

Milton Drucker, dean of marine education at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, noted that the fishing industry in the United States ''is only beginning to make the transition from family run businesses to bigger corporate enterprises. The business practices of boat owners and wholesale distributors are not necessarily the most modern or efficient, but they have traditions and family ties that go back generations. It's just not reasonable to expect the Fishport to change things in six months.''

Despite the slow start at Fishport, Mr. Drucker extolls the seafood business as a growth opportunity for New York. New Yorkers already eat 28 pounds of fish a person in a year, or twice the national average, he said, ''and we are in a position to benefit as the rest of the country continues to shift from red meat to fish.''

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A version of this article appears in print on July 27, 1988, on Page B00001 of the National edition with the headline: Only the Fish Are Missing At Fishport In Brooklyn. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe